The papers strained against the bag and she moved it into her arms, cradling it like a child rather than letting it burst its seams and spew her work all over the pavement. Why wasn’t she one of these women with an appropriate bag for every occasion? Why always the tote bags? she wondered briefly. The other day, she’d emptied one out on her desk and an old pair of bikini bottoms and a battered pair of goggles had fallen out along with her paperwork, two chewed pens and a scattering of sand.
She really needed to go shopping. Perhaps Toby’s PA could pick her out something ‘on trend’. If there was any money left in the kitty that was. Probably with Toby’s attempt to keep up with the Piers Morgans of ITV draining their joint account, a decent bag was probably once again a distant dream.
She thought again of Toby’s man-makeover, the fact he’d thought nothing of splashing the cash on himself, whereas she felt guilty buying a new pair of shoes and was carrying legal documents in a bag that was more suited to tins of sweetcorn. They’d used to be on the same page about everything but now it was as if they had completely different priorities.
Usually, when her ‘work bag’ was flung on the passenger seat, she didn’t really think about it. But walking along the road clutching a bag bursting with important files made her painfully aware of just how unprofessional she must look. Even the potential flasher in his raincoat was holding a leather briefcase.
The traffic that passed her as she walked was constant, and little drips of rainwater began to pepper her tights as drivers flicked the edges of puddles and sent tiny droplets skyward. Suddenly she was aware that there was the noise of a larger vehicle approaching. She glanced over her shoulder and saw to her relief it was the town bus.
The stop was just a few metres away – she’d made it. Deftly stepping to the side as the vehicle hissed to a stop, she even managed to avoid the slightly larger slosh of water it sent up as it pulled over at the stop.
See? The day was beginning to turn around already.
The two students got on, waving their cards briefly at the driver before turning their attention again to their phones. Mr Flasher was next, his coattails flapping dangerously as he stood on the step in the slight breeze.
‘Got a pass, mate?’ the driver asked him.
‘Sorry?’ Mr Flasher leaned forward and cupped his ear.
‘I need to see your pass, innit.’
‘You … if you what?’
‘Can see your PASS!’ Clare said loudly, fed up with waiting.
‘Oh, can you? I’m so sorry!’ Mr Flasher pulled his coat more tightly around him. ‘I thought the coat was covering everything.’
Then it was her turn. She lifted her foot towards the step, only to have the bus doors hiss shut so close to her face that the rubber seal almost touched her nose. ‘Wait!’ she said, smacking her palm against the door. Surely the driver had seen her?
The man in the driver’s seat was in his twenties, hair slicked back under a cap and sporting a beard so bushy it could well be home to several endangered species of wildlife. He wore a pair of slightly tinted glasses, and as she banged on the door again, she saw the white of a music pod in his ear. ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘Hey!’
Without even a flicker of acknowledgement, he pushed the gearstick forward and the bus pulled away, its heavy wheels sending a cold slug of rainwater into one of her shoes.
Gasping, she stepped back, nearly colliding with an elderly woman in a red jacket who had arrived while the others were boarding. ‘Sorry,’ Clare said, stumbling slightly and nearly dropping her bag. ‘Can you believe that? He was wearing earphones too. Are they allowed to do that? Surely, it’s unsafe!’
The old woman regarded her with a steady gaze. Buoyed by the attention, Clare leaned conspiratorially towards her new confidante. ‘Well, he’s got another think coming,’ she said, feeling anger still bubbling inside her. ‘Let’s just say I’ve memorised his number plate and I’ll be getting on the phone to his boss.’
The woman’s watery blue eyes looked back at her for a moment, as if digesting what she had said. Then, seeming to realise that Clare was expecting some sort of response, she nodded sagely and raised a gnarled finger to tap the side of her nose. ‘Spring onions!’ she said, looking eagerly at Clare. ‘Spring onions and a dash of red wine! That’s the secret. That’s the secret!’
Typically, Nigel was in reception when she arrived late, bedraggled, and twenty-two pounds fifty poorer after having to call a cab. ‘I can’t help the traffic,’ the driver had protested when she’d questioned the fare. ‘I have to make a living you know.’
‘Everything all right, Carol?’ Nigel asked as she entered the building, tote bag sodden, hair stuck to her head, tights a riot of muddy polka-dots.
‘Yes,’ she said, not bothering to correct him. ‘Yes. I’m sorry I’m late …’
‘Oh!’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘I hadn’t realised you were.’
Luckily, she managed to get to her office and slip her tights off under the desk (thankfully, she’d shaved a couple of days ago so although her legs felt like sandpaper, they looked smooth enough) before Stefan Camberwaddle arrived. Which, bearing in mind the way the day had started, was an almost inconceivable win.
While the bread and butter of her work was sorting out transactional minutia between ordinary homeowners, she’d begun to take on more and more commercial work in recent months. After ten years of purely residential conveyancing it was a relief to tackle some different issues and landing Stefan as a client had been a real boon. She’d handled his personal house move – involving a particularly complicated right of way – about six months ago and now he wanted to involve her in his business. His multi-million-pound property flipping business.
When he’d said the word retainer on the phone, she’d almost wet herself. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Will, she’d thought. It’d be a tidy bonus in her pocket and surely at last the chance of a promotion? Nigel had been hinting to her about a potential partnership for the past two years.
After a little bit of diligence with a comb and the hand-dryer in the work loos Clare had also got her hair to more or less behave, and had even applied a slick of slightly strange tasting lipstick from a tiny stump she’d found in the bottom of her tote, so by the time Ann showed Mr Camberwaddle in, Clare was looking almost entirely human.
‘Hello Mr Camberwaddle,’ she said, rising to her feet and extending a confident hand for a shake. ‘How are you?’
‘Stefan, please,’ he said, then smiled, revealing teeth that were so shockingly bleached she jumped involuntarily. ‘Is everything OK?’ he said, no doubt feeling the jolt from her shaking arm travel up his. ‘You look very white.’
‘Ohhh, two million of business, ohhh, two million of business,’ she sang under her breath as she strode confidently to her boss’s room an hour later. Somehow the phrase had become set to the tune of the hokey-cokey and stuck in her head on a loop.
Nigel’s door was slightly ajar, so she knocked lightly and stuck her head around the gap. Inside, Nigel was bent over his desk, his face so close to the notepad he was writing on that had she been in the chair opposite, she’d have been tempted to draw a second face on the top of his bald head.
Luckily, it was Will, not she, who sat in front of the boss. And he seemed to have had no such temptation. Instead, he was talking about advertising. ‘Business cards on reception desks in doctors’ surgeries,’ he was saying. ‘And maybe something we can stick under windshield wipers in hospital car parks.’
‘Um, Nigel … Mr Mann?’ she said, raising her voice slightly.
Both men jumped as if they had been caught in an illicit act. Then Nigel cleared his throat. ‘Clare!’ he said, getting it right for once. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Just thought I’d let you know that the meeting with Mr Camberwaddle, you know, the property tycoon, went really well.’
‘Oh well done, well done,’ her boss replied absent-mindedly.
‘In fact, he’s actually put us on a—’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ Nigel said, laying his pen down for an instant and pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘This is all wonderful news of course, it’s just that Will and I were in the middle of a session.’
‘A mind-mapping session,’ Will added, helpfully. ‘Advertising strategies, you know. Trying to net some serious cash for the firm.’
‘Oh, I see … well, I just wanted to—’
‘Do you mind,’ Nigel interrupted, smiling in the mildly strained way a grandfather might to a slightly irritating child, ‘if I could ask you to pop back later with the details, or jot them down? It’s just that you’re not meant to break the um … the …’ he looked at Will imploringly.
‘The flow,’ Will finished for him. ‘It’s one of the strategies of highly successful people I’ve been reading about,’ he said, unbuttoning his suit jacket and shifting forward on his chair. ‘Pour your ideas onto the page and genius will out!’ He grinned, without a jot of self-consciousness.
‘So, if you don’t mind?’ Nigel said, nodding at her as if he wanted to headbutt her out of the door from four metres away.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Sure, no problem.’
As she closed the door she heard Will begin again. ‘Defibrillators! We could put our number on defibrillator paddles!’
Chapter Three
Standing in the queue at the local independent coffee house that lunchtime, her thermal cup clutched in her hand, Clare waited impatiently for her cappuccino. She had ten minutes left on her lunchbreak – easily enough time, but for some reason the server seemed to be sprinkling some sort of powdered masterpiece on the foamy top of the cappuccino he was preparing for the woman in front. Every now and then, he’d sigh loudly, scrape off his design, reapply the foam and get to work with his chocolate shaker again.
She’d chosen this particular coffee house as the takeaway coffee service was usually pretty rapid. On quieter days, she liked to visit the little tea shop around the corner, tuck herself away at a corner table and scribble in her notebook. Not legal stuff. Poems. She’d been writing in the same battered notebook since she’d been at uni – it was her guilty pleasure and a way of relieving stress.
Toby had found the notebook once. ‘What are these?’ he’d said. ‘Song lyrics or something?’
She’d felt suddenly possessive – as if he was asking to read her diary. ‘Nothing. Give it back!’ she’d said, sounding about five years old.
I mean, who writes poems? Plus, it was something that was just for her.
‘Honestly,’ the girl waiting for her coffee told the server now. ‘Honestly, it looks fine. I’ll take it like that.’ She glanced behind her at the growing line of customers apologetically, her immaculate blonde hair fanning out behind her as she moved. ‘It’s only coffee,’ she added.
Her words coincided with a break in the music, meaning that as well as being heard by her individual barista, they were picked up by the older, skinny guy operating the till who glared at her as if she’d been spouting some sort of anti-coffee hate speech. There was an awkward silence before the music kicked back in.
Finally pleased with his design, the barista straightened up and passed the coffee to the girl, who grinned when she saw the intricate rose pattern he’d created. ‘Suppose it was worth the wait,’ she said, flashing the top of her (probably cold) drink briefly to Clare like some sort of prize.
‘Lovely,’ Clare said, between gritted teeth.
‘Anything for our valued customers,’ the barista nodded, doffing his cap like a nineteenth-century chimney sweep.
Clare was normally a fan of a bit of chocolate powder on her cappuccino on the rare occasions she treated herself to anything other than the instant coffee and limescaley water from the work kettle. She glanced at her watch; five minutes to go. She’d have to forgo it today or risk being late.
‘Cappuccino, please,’ she said, ready to refuse sprinkles – especially ones with an intricate design. ‘To go.’ She handed him her reusable cup – white, with a pattern of musical notes – a present from Ann last Christmas.
‘Right,’ came the reply. The barista fiddled about with the stainless steel contraption, dispensed some coffee and duly spooned on some milk foam. Then he plonked the drink unceremoniously in front of her. ‘There you go,’ he said.
‘Excuse me,’ Clare said, feeling disproportionately angry, ‘but you didn’t offer me any sprinkles!’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘Well aren’t you going to?’
‘Yes, of course. Would you like any sprinkles, madam?’ he said, a hint of sarcasm in his tone.
‘No, thank you. It’s fine like it is.’ She picked up her cup in one hand, lid in the other, and went to move towards the till, hearing the collective sigh of the queue behind her.
‘So why make a point of it?’
‘Excuse me?’ she turned back towards the barista, slopping some coffee – which, she noted, was on the cold side – over her hand.
‘Why make a point of the sprinkles when you didn’t even want them?’ The barista, who must have been eighteen years old at most, narrowed his eyes at her as if she was some sort of troublemaker. ‘What are you, mystery shopper or something?’
‘No, I just saw … well, surely it’s your job to offer? And,’ she felt herself blush but continued anyway, ‘you spent all that time on her sprinkles; why not give all the customers that kind of service?’ Why am I always being ignored?
‘But you didn’t want them!’
‘Look, can I just get a coffee?’ the man at the front of the queue interjected.
‘But I might have wanted them. In fact, I DID want them. I just don’t have time for you to create a Da Vinci masterpiece on the top of my drink!’ she replied, feeling her neck getting hot.
‘Oh, well, in that case,’ he said, his nostrils flaring slightly, ‘you ought to have some sprinkles.’
‘No!’ she held her cup further away from him. ‘I don’t want them any more.’
‘No, I think you should have them! Treat yourself!’ He picked up his shaker and launched a load of chocolate powder approximately towards her drink. The lid of the shaker loosened and clattered to the floor as he did so, and she ended up with not only the top of her drink covered in powder, but her hand and a little bit of her sleeve too.
‘Thank you,’ she said, trying to retain some semblance of dignity.
‘There you go,’ he said, unabashed. ‘Your cup runneth over.’
Before she could retaliate, the man behind her sniggered, pushed past her and ordered. ‘Americano please, mate,’ he said.
And she was forgotten.
What was it with her? she thought to herself as she walked back to the office, sipping at her overly chocolated drink through the tiny gap in its mouthpiece. Why was she suddenly getting so worked up about everything?
As she pushed open the glass door of the office, she caught her reflection again. She thought of the barista’s favourite customer, with her long, glossy hair and shift dress and couldn’t help comparing it to her own rather frumpy skirt and messy hair. It wasn’t that she’d let her moustache grow, or she’d stopped doing her roots, or she’d even stopped showering. It wasn’t as if she was physically repulsive or completely unkempt.
But she wasn’t looking great either. Her hair had already lost its hard-won volume, her coat was a relic from three winters ago, and below, her stubbly and now goosebumped legs looked like uncooked chicken thighs. She hated the thought that it mattered. But like it or not, women are always judged on appearances. Even now, after years of feminism, you had to play the game.
It wasn’t about people finding her attractive or not; she didn’t want a teenage barista to write his phone number on her cup or ask her out on a date. She ce
rtainly didn’t want Nigel to notice her in that way. But maybe her appearance made her look as if she wasn’t taking herself seriously. Maybe that was why nobody else seemed to.
Could her evident self-neglect have affected her career too? It wasn’t as if she was surrounded by fashionistas in the office, but the same rules didn’t apply to men in business. Nigel had bought two suits in the eighties and was clearly hoping they’d see him through to retirement, and even Toby until recently had worn the same shirt and tie to the studio day in and day out. Yet Nigel was a senior partner in his own firm, and Toby had received what he’d described as a ‘dream promotion’.
The rules were different for women though. Heaven forbid they let themselves go grey, or forgot to pluck their chin hairs, or shave their armpits. Women were consigned to the garbage pile as soon as they let themselves slip.
Perhaps, she thought, as she reached her office and shook chocolate powder from her hand in the direction of the bin, she ought to do something to make herself feel better. Toby had had a makeover, so why shouldn’t she max out the plastic on herself a bit? A bit of retail therapy would make herself feel better, even if it was superficial.
‘Ann,’ she said, when her PA brought in some folders and plonked them on the desk. ‘Do you mind if I head off early today?’
‘Aren’t you meant to be my boss?’
It was true; she was in charge of Ann. But she liked to think of her as a friend foremost. She didn’t want to leave her in difficulties by sloping out to go shopping when there was work to do.
‘I suppose,’ she grinned. ‘It’s just – well, I’m nipping out for a shopping trip. Bit naughty really.’
‘Asda?’
‘No, a clothes shop.’ The look was brief, but she felt Ann’s eyes travel to her legs stretched out below her desk, which as well as being stubbled and goosebumped, were blotched with red as they thawed out from her excursion.
Evidently, she wasn’t the only one who thought it was time she had a few new outfits.
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